One Who Defends Death
by read-reread-readagain
Summary: Death is not a being; it is Timeless and Eternal. To be the Master of Death means, not to become Death or to command It, but to Defend It. - Please review and let me know if you want to read more of this story! Also, plot suggestions are greatly appreciated :)


**AN: Hi readers! I was reading a couple 'Harry is the Master of Death' stories, and I came up with a different take on that plot. This is just a rough draft, so don't be too irritated if the grammar and such is choppy! **

**I'm going to keep this one on the back-burner until my Courage story is done, ****but I wanted to put it out there and ask for your thoughts.**

**Enjoy!**

**Summary:** Death is not a being; it is Timeless and Eternal. To be the Master of Death means, not to become Death or to command It, but to Defend It.

**-Story Start-**

It is hard to describe Death as a being, because It is not. Death is a Truth. It is not person or a being. It is not alive. The best way to describe Death would be to compare It, not to a god or a spirit, but a door. There is Life and there is After Life, and Death is the passage between them.

Another common misconception about Death is the belief that every person has a predetermined date in their future that is their 'time' to die.

This is not true.

Death is a passage, not a clock. People live and people die through their own actions and the actions of those around them. There never is and never was any sort of being choosing a soul's time to die. However, though Death has no authority over when or how a person will die, It does have Laws that must be followed.

These are the Laws of Death:  
\- it is Forbidden to return a departed soul to its original body or any other  
\- it is Forbidden to deliberately and knowingly steal, damage, destroy, imprison, enslave, or corrupt any soul  
\- in each world, there must always be One Who Defends Death

There will always be those who break the Laws as they seek to cheat Death, but because Death is a door, and only a door, It has no way to enforce the Laws or punish the Lawbreakers. That job belongs to the Master of Death.

Throughout time, the title of the one enforcing the Laws of Death has changed. Reaper, Ferryman, Gatekeeper, The Judge, Soulless One, That Which Swallows Shadows, One Who Defends Death, Master of Death - all these and more appear in legends, myths, songs, and histories going back to the birth of the world.

When the world was born, and Life introduced, Death followed quickly. Alongside them came the very first being to act as the One Who Defends Death. This being came from a world that had ended, where there was neither Life nor Death, and remained on the Earth for several millennia.

Eventually it chose to pass on its mantle and duties to another. It created an object of power, tied to Death, and released it into the world. Beings and creatures throughout the world were drawn by the allure of power, but few ever found it. Those that found it were tested, and the one that passed the test was chosen. The first One Who Defends Death met Its successor, passed on Its duties and knowledge, and crossed Death toward After Life. Since then, when the One Who Defends Death chooses to end their tenure, they test potential successors through various objects of power tied to Death. Once a successor has been chosen, they are gifted with the collective knowledge of their predecessors.

And the cycle was continued in this world.

After the first Gatekeeper, no one remained in that role for more than two or three millenia. A few passed on their duties after on a few hundred years, the shortest tenure being two hundred and fifty years. And each Gatekeeper handled their duties in different ways. Some personally enforce the Laws, punishing each Lawbreaker with their own hands. Some created minions to assist them in their work; shinnigami, dementors, and reapers, to name a few. And a few took delight in giving power to mortals and setting these heroes against the Lawbreakers as part of an epic adventure.

As a whole, Soulless Ones did not often remain in the eye of the world. There was no law against their interference with the inhabitants of the Earth, but they usually preferred to live in various levels of isolation. The constant and dangerous responsibility to track down Lawbreakers, as well as the Immortality that came with their mantle, meant that becoming politically powerful or otherwise involved with the affairs of mortals would inevitably become... messy. Most chose to make a clean break at the time their mortality ended and lived simply, using their time to fight and destroy Lawbreakers.

However, one of these legendary beings chose to intervene directly in the life of a young boy with the whole world against him.

This particular Master of Death, during Its mortality, had been a teacher of magic. It had loved its students and It had loved children even more. That love of the innocent, so central to Its being, had shaped Its actions as Master of Death, prompting It to use violence or threats only as a last resort, and to offer help and support to those who teetered dangerously on the edge of the Laws.

After nearly fifteen hundred years of carrying out Its duties as the One Who Defends Death, It decided to seek seek out a successor and Its attention was caught by a young orphan child with the name of Tom Marvolo Riddle. The child had an indomitable will, a mind that saw the world around him as it could be, and had a marvelous potential for greatness. With such traits, It thought Tom would test his limits and explore the world, growing all the while into a worthy successor.

But the longer It watched the boy's life, the more It realized that this boy would never be the Master of Death. Tom was too afraid of Death to Defend it, and he believed that power was more important than any other talent or ability. The potential It had seen in him was being wasted on a mad race for immortality and an unquenchable thirst for revenge against all who had, to his mind, wronged him.

It watched as Tom experimented with darker magicks, and ventured ever closer to breaking the Laws of Death. It knew it had the power and ability to destroy the boy if he became a Lawbreaker, but because of Its great love It hoped that if the boy did indeed break the Laws of Death, then It would be able to help him heal and restore himself, rather than having to destroy him.

And then Tom ripped apart his soul, and in doing so, broke the Second Law. And as It always did, the Master of Death approached the Lawbreaker and offered healing. Tom refused, but It offered many times. Perhaps because Tom could have been Its successor, or perhaps because It was fond of the child Tom had been, It delayed taking action against the Lawbreaker.

However, when Tom decided to tear a sixth piece from his soul using the murder of an innocent babe, It knew it was time to step in to defend the Laws of Death. It tracked down each fragment of Tom's soul and gathered them together, but It would not send them through Death until the entire soul had been collected. But before It could complete Its task, Tom had found his way through the protections around the child he intended to kill and had attacked.

It did not reach the house in time to protect the family. Because It was Master of Death, It felt the soul of the child's father separate forever from its body as it was claimed by Death. Powerful as It was, even with all the knowledge of Its predecessors, It was unable to pierce the enchantment that hid the location of the child It wished to protect. So all It could do was 'listen' to the souls in the house and regret not acting sooner.

The Lawbreaker left the body of the child's father and ascended to the second floor. The child's mother's soul shone brilliantly with love for her son and her fierce determination to protect him. She faced the Lawbreaker head on and refused to back down, even when she was offered the chance to live. It was surprised to realize that this offer was sincere. The Lawbreaker truly would leave this woman alive if she stood aside and allowed him to kill her son. But she did not move, and the baby boy became an orphan.

Something happened then that nobody expected. The Lawbreaker tried to kill the child with the same curse he'd used on the child's parents, but the curse did not strike. In an explosion of magic, powerful and ancient, the curse was repelled back from the boy and struck its caster. It felt the soul of the Lawbreaker splinter, and as the larger piece fled quickly, the smallest of splinters fixed itself onto the brightly glowing soul of the boy who had survived.

The enchantment hiding the house was shattered with the explosion of magic, and It quickly appeared before the unconscious child. It examined the bleeding wound on the boy's forehead, tainted with Black Magic and harboring a part of the Lawbreaker's soul, then looked over the body of the boy's mother. In order to protect her son, the woman had performed a sacrificial magic as old as Death itself. She had, knowingly or not, accomplished an Exchange of Souls.

The Exchange was just what it sounded like: trading the life of one soul for the death of another. It could not be used to save those already dead, but instead required the knowing sacrifice of a life for another. The child's mother had been given the chance to live, but had chosen to die for her son instead. Magic recognized the Exchange in the sacrifice of her soul and had extended its protection to the child the woman had died for. When the curse intended to kill the child came close, Magic recognized the threat to the soul of the child it was now bound to protect and defended him. The resulting clash manifested as an explosion that all but destroyed the room, and would have killed the Lawbreaker had his soul been whole.

Even then the Gatekeeper could have separated the soul piece from the boy and destroyed the others as well. And It wanted to, not wanting an innocent child to suffer. However, It waited once more. It had become aware of the scheming of an old wizard called Albus Dumbledore, who It recognized as one the Hallows had tested as the Gatekeeper's successor, but who had failed.

The man had heard the prophecy and become immovably convinced that it meant the boy had to die. He had set plans in motion that would allow him to wield the child like a weapon, using him to destroy the soul pieces of the Lawbreaker and culminating in a final battle that would, inevitably, end with the death of both boy and enemy.

The Gatekeeper again found Itself hesitating to take action. It could simply destroy the Lawbreaker by sending the collected soul pieces to Death, thus freeing those oppressed by him from their fear. But in doing so, many wrong things would remain unchanged. The boy would be free of the parasitic soul piece, but would still be an orphan. Albus, stubborn as It knew the man was, would refuse to believe the Lawbreaker was truly dead. He would continue to preach of an oncoming war and would pile the burden of the fate of their country on a child's shoulders. The Lawbreakers followers would remain free from It so long as they obeyed the Laws of Death, but they were bloodthirsty creatures. Even without a master, and especially with the certainty of Albus' warmongering, they would continue to kill, torture, and rape, and the boy would certainly be their first target.

This could not be allowed. And so, after nearly fifteen hundred years of solitude, It made a choice.


End file.
